I can’t believe it’s almost the end of January – where have the last four weeks gone?
As is usual for this time of year, the last four weeks have been dominated by preparing the budget for 2014-15. As you will all know we face some considerable challenges; developing and improving services to our communities, citizens and businesses whilst delivering significant savings to our tax payers. This year’s budget has probably been the most difficult yet to set. The budget papers published yesterday for scrutiny recommend that members approve around £18million to be redirected and invested in front line business plan priority areas. These areas include increasing expenditure on highway repairs and maintenance, building more homes, continuing our investment of an additional £1m in economic development, increased expenditure on adult care for the elderly and vulnerable and children’s safeguarding services. To afford this, savings of £25 million are recommended for next year from across all service areas. Our funding from central government has now been cut by over 32% since 2010. For the fifth year in a row members are considering no rise in council tax. All of these decisions will be taken by Council at its February 25 meeting.
My thanks to the whole finance team and the service areas who have worked so hard to get us to a point where we have a balanced budget to recommend to elected members.
Some good news for our excellent HR function. They have been short listed for the HR Distinction Awards - the HR Distinction Awards celebrate the outstanding contribution that innovatively designed and superbly executed HR strategies make to business performance and the bottom line. Being nominated as a finalist and winning an award affirms to our employees, colleagues, elected members and, industry peers that Wiltshire Council and our team is delivering best practice HR management. For information we are a finalist at next week's international awards in Birmingham under the category of Distinction in Change Management.
See website for further information - www.hrdistinctionawards.com
All the best to the HR team for next week.
Speak again soon. For daily updates, discussion, personal opinion, comment or just to connect or keep in touch you can follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/#!/drcarltonbrand.
Carlton
Wednesday, 29 January 2014
Friday, 24 January 2014
Coaching and mentoring
Yesterday morning I spent an energising couple of hours with 30 staff who are either qualified coaches or currently working towards their level 3 and 5 coaching qualifications. I did my coaching exams back in 2010 and coach a number of staff and managers internally and also a number of chief execs and directors externally in my own time.
Coaching, and indeed mentoring is an essential part of ongoing staff development and management practice. It is also a two way learning process, and I have found that I always learn as much from my clients as they might when working from me. I always work with a coach and separately a mentor to develop my thinking and performance in my role. As the challenges of the modern business world accelerate and get more difficult, I regard this as an essential development approach for us all to remain relevant, high performing and able to deal with the pressures we face.
We have a well framed corporate coaching programme led by Amanda Collyer in our Human Resources Organisation Development team. This programme seeks to train staff and managers as coaches and also matches those seeking coaching to trained coaches. I encourage you all to get involved with this programme. The most fundamental aspect of being a manager is the development of our staff and the selection and development of future leaders and managers. Coaching provides a great way to achieve this.
It would be good to hear your views.
Speak again soon.
For daily updates, discussion, personal opinion, comment or just to connect or keep in touch you can follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/#!/drcarltonbrand.
Carlton
Coaching, and indeed mentoring is an essential part of ongoing staff development and management practice. It is also a two way learning process, and I have found that I always learn as much from my clients as they might when working from me. I always work with a coach and separately a mentor to develop my thinking and performance in my role. As the challenges of the modern business world accelerate and get more difficult, I regard this as an essential development approach for us all to remain relevant, high performing and able to deal with the pressures we face.
We have a well framed corporate coaching programme led by Amanda Collyer in our Human Resources Organisation Development team. This programme seeks to train staff and managers as coaches and also matches those seeking coaching to trained coaches. I encourage you all to get involved with this programme. The most fundamental aspect of being a manager is the development of our staff and the selection and development of future leaders and managers. Coaching provides a great way to achieve this.
It would be good to hear your views.
Speak again soon.
For daily updates, discussion, personal opinion, comment or just to connect or keep in touch you can follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/#!/drcarltonbrand.
Carlton
Sunday, 19 January 2014
A bright Sunday morning
It’s a bright Sunday morning and I thought I’d pen this week’s blog sitting at the kitchen table for a change. I’ve been reading the winter edition of Professional Manager magazine, always well worth a read and a think.
Ann Francke, the CEO of the Chartered Management Institute always pens a compelling read in her briefing. This quarter she makes some forthright observations that strike a chord with me – both in the public sector generally and probably at Wiltshire Council in some areas too.
She argues that much of management isn’t management at all. In fact it’s the opposite. Rather than managing people, weaker leaders retreat to a comfort zone of command and control. You will have heard me speak about command and control before – the antitheses of systems thinking. The real job of managers, which should be to motivate people, inspire them to encourage others and develop their strengths become casualties of a culture that has become more about locking people in than setting them free.
In many organisations, particularly in the public sector I believe, managers seek to do the right thing but the corporate DNA of command and control and micro managing causes them to behave differently; to comply with the expectation that to succeed they need to interfere with the detail and negate the real aspects of their role which should be to motivate and develop staff whilst thinking about and planning how the organisation will grow and achieve its performance objectives within decreasing income.
As Preteous is reported to have said, the role of the leader is to inspire, enable and support. And then ensure you don’t get in the way.
Food for thought. It would be good to hear your views.
Speak again soon.
For daily updates, discussion, personal opinion, comment or just to connect or keep in touch you can follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/#!/drcarltonbrand.
Carlton
Ann Francke, the CEO of the Chartered Management Institute always pens a compelling read in her briefing. This quarter she makes some forthright observations that strike a chord with me – both in the public sector generally and probably at Wiltshire Council in some areas too.
She argues that much of management isn’t management at all. In fact it’s the opposite. Rather than managing people, weaker leaders retreat to a comfort zone of command and control. You will have heard me speak about command and control before – the antitheses of systems thinking. The real job of managers, which should be to motivate people, inspire them to encourage others and develop their strengths become casualties of a culture that has become more about locking people in than setting them free.
In many organisations, particularly in the public sector I believe, managers seek to do the right thing but the corporate DNA of command and control and micro managing causes them to behave differently; to comply with the expectation that to succeed they need to interfere with the detail and negate the real aspects of their role which should be to motivate and develop staff whilst thinking about and planning how the organisation will grow and achieve its performance objectives within decreasing income.
As Preteous is reported to have said, the role of the leader is to inspire, enable and support. And then ensure you don’t get in the way.
Food for thought. It would be good to hear your views.
Speak again soon.
For daily updates, discussion, personal opinion, comment or just to connect or keep in touch you can follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/#!/drcarltonbrand.
Carlton
Friday, 10 January 2014
Happy New Year
Happy New Year to you all. I hope you had a good break over the Christmas period and return to work refreshed.
Many staff were on duty over the holiday period working – either providing our many 24/7 services or working on the flood related problems that have been ongoing since before Christmas. I’d just like to say thank you to everybody who provided such valuable service over the last few weeks – it’s been excellent.
Today I have spent most of the morning with the elections team and the Electoral Commission planning for the 2014 European elections which take place in May. This is a large and complex event with over 300 polling stations, 4 verification venues and a large single count venue. It will involve hundreds of staff in numerous roles so if you would like to be involved in this, please contact the elections team or let me know. I always need a few more volunteers. Elections are always very exciting.
I have just come from the Local Resilience Forum (LRF) which is meeting at least daily at the moment to coordinate the response to the floods throughout Wiltshire. There are reps from all of the different agencies involved (Wiltshire Council, Met Office, Environment Agency, Police, Fire, Ambulance, Highways Agency, Public Health, NHS England, Swindon BC, central government, the power companies, Wessex Water and others) where we understand the current situation and direct the coordinated response as appropriate. This work will go on throughout the weekend. Many thanks to all of those on call.
Speak again soon.
For daily updates, discussion, personal opinion, comment or just to connect or keep in touch you can follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/#!/drcarltonbrand
Carlton
Many staff were on duty over the holiday period working – either providing our many 24/7 services or working on the flood related problems that have been ongoing since before Christmas. I’d just like to say thank you to everybody who provided such valuable service over the last few weeks – it’s been excellent.
Today I have spent most of the morning with the elections team and the Electoral Commission planning for the 2014 European elections which take place in May. This is a large and complex event with over 300 polling stations, 4 verification venues and a large single count venue. It will involve hundreds of staff in numerous roles so if you would like to be involved in this, please contact the elections team or let me know. I always need a few more volunteers. Elections are always very exciting.
I have just come from the Local Resilience Forum (LRF) which is meeting at least daily at the moment to coordinate the response to the floods throughout Wiltshire. There are reps from all of the different agencies involved (Wiltshire Council, Met Office, Environment Agency, Police, Fire, Ambulance, Highways Agency, Public Health, NHS England, Swindon BC, central government, the power companies, Wessex Water and others) where we understand the current situation and direct the coordinated response as appropriate. This work will go on throughout the weekend. Many thanks to all of those on call.
Speak again soon.
For daily updates, discussion, personal opinion, comment or just to connect or keep in touch you can follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/#!/drcarltonbrand
Carlton
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